The Even More Freewheelin' Jeffrey Lewis

Description

Poetic garage-folk-rock from New York, produced by Roger Moutenot (Yo La Tengo, Lou Reed)! "Jeffrey is the best pure songwriter I know" - David Berman. The EVEN MORE Freewheelin' Jeffrey Lewis was recorded in just 4 days in Nashville, by Roger Moutenot (longtime producer of Yo La Tengo and Jeffrey Lewis's previous album Bad Wiring), and features the touring band Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage, consisting of Brent Cole on drums, Mem Pahl on bass, and Mallory Feuer on violin and keyboards. Jeffrey's "anti-singing" style continues to reach the humanity behind the artifice, reflecting the nakedness of the album cover. Speaking of which: on a snowy day in February 1963, Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo were photographed in New York for the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, at the corner of Dylan's apartment on 4th Street. 60 years later, longtime 4th Street resident Jeffrey Lewis had the idea to try to take the same cold photo but without pants, to prove he is "even more" free than Bob! This plan was thwarted by climate change, as New York winters no longer provide snowy street photo opportunities, but at least Jeffrey tried. While the album cover may be a neighborhood joke from a New Yorker, it also serves to throw down the gauntlet to modern songwriters, as if to emphasize that no one in contemporary songwriting can truly replace Jeffrey (barefoot or not). If you thought Bad Wiring from 2019 was an unstoppable highlight of Jeffrey Lewis's 20-year discography, get ready to be shaken again. The range of moods, situations, wordplay, and styles here is breathtaking, and if you aren't taken on ten different emotional roller coasters by the ten songs on this album, then you might just be a Chat GPT replicant robot. The whimsical existential opener "Do What Comes Natural" has been one of Jeffrey's live set favorites for a few years now, and rarely fails to send people rushing to the merch table asking, "which album is this song on?!" Well, here it finally is.